Thirith on 22/1/2025 at 20:33
I've got the following weird problem: I got a new PC that I hooked up in the room I use as an office in order to set it up, downloading and installing drivers and software etc. Once I was done, I moved the PC to the bedroom (where I've got my main/gaming PC), removed my Geforce card from the old main PC and put it in the new PC and switched it on, thinking that I'd now switch the PCs and use the new one.
Except when I switched on the new PC and it tried to reconnect to wifi, it somehow killed my wifi network, disconnecting all my devices on the wifi network. So I switched off the PC, restarted the router, waited until the network showed up again and all my devices connected to it, and then I restarted the PC, it tried to connect to the network, and BAM. Wifi network stops working for all devices. Never mind that while I was setting up the new PC in a different room it connected to wifi without any problems: after moving it to a new room and putting in that old Geforce RTX 3080 it's become a wifi killer.
Does anyone here have any idea what the problem might be and how I might solve it?
Al_B on 22/1/2025 at 23:01
Can you eliminate whether attempting to connect by WiFi in its new location is just a coincidence or part of the problem? e.g. turn it on but don't attempt to connect and see if it could be interference or similar related to another cause - e.g. the monitor, card or PSU.
It would be a bit unusual but I'd be inclined to try to eliminate things one by one - e.g. cabling and grounding particularly if you have extension strips involved.
TheRealSlimGarrett on 23/1/2025 at 00:02
Are you using a plug into the wall socket type of extender that transmits though your ring main earth wire? Maybe you have a faulty socket or wiring that is causing bad feedback to the router?
Thirith on 23/1/2025 at 07:11
Thanks for your answers. Last night, before going to bed, I started up the computer in the hope to try some of these things out - and what do you know, it connected to the wifi without any issues. Which is good and bad - I'm glad it's working, but I wish I knew what the problem had been, in case it comes back. If it does, though, I'll come back to this thread.
taffernicus on 2/2/2025 at 14:45
i reckon it has to do with :
1. ip conflict
2. Ethernet PAUSE frame , it's a part of ethernet flow control
For case number 1, maybe you should manually delete the old stale entry regarding the device's ip address on your router, it might still be cached and double check again the ARP table entry. if you want to go wiresharking then look on arp request/reply traffc or DHCP request, DHCP reply phase and DHCPDECLINE flag. Case number 2 is quite hard to analyze, it's usually caused by USB docking connected to a laptop or computer. Though it's unlikely related to your problem, here are the articles on pause frame :
(
https://jeffq.com/blog/the-ethernet-pause-frame/) https://jeffq.com/blog/the-ethernet-pause-frame/
(
https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2020/7/6/usb-c-network-hubs/) https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2020/7/6/usb-c-network-hubs/
or you can look that up on Ethernet: The Definitive Guide 2nd edition book on page 57
I think I've come across the pause frame case in my previous job, i could see usb to eth adapter and usb docking station anywere. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to use wireshark and some network switches don't have port mirroring
Thirith on 3/2/2025 at 07:13
The problem hasn't popped up again, but I do think it's likely it was an IP conflict. The one thing I did when it happened was go through the list of devices in the router setup, deleting devices that were certainly no longer current, so that may have helped.
